1 Power and the News Media

OTHER PATTERNS OF DOMINANCE  
Our analysis of the role of the press in the reproduction of racism is par-
adigmatic for its role in similar relations of inequality and oppression. 
Within flexible but clear boundaries of dissent, contradiction, and varia-
tion, much of what has been argued here also holds for the position of 
the mainstream press with regard to male dominance, class conflict, 
protest movements, international policies, and the relations between the 
North and South. More or less subtly, the press and most other news 
media position themselves in all these power conflicts at the side of the 
dominant group, thereby confirming the status quo, legitimating 
inequality, and reproducing the (ingroup) consensus on which they rest. 
If occasionally the news media seem to engage in a more oppositional 
role, they do so only when a clear and powerful movement of (usually 
moderate) dissent has been established among the elites. If in this way 
the media become agents of change, their ideological and sociological 
position seems to be inconsistent with a leading role; the media seldom 
initiate such change.
Gender  
Examples and research to support gender patterns abound. Feminist 
scholarship has extensively shown the prevalence of male chauvinism in 
the mass media, even today, despite the modest gains in the employ-
ment of female journalists and program makers in the media and the 
slow acceptance of some major demands of the women s movement.
21 
In 
spite of these socioeconomic advances and obvious ideological changes, 
most of what has been said for minorities also holds, although some-
what less extremely, for the position of women in the media and in the 
news. Most journalists are men, and women have even less access to 
higher editorial positions. As sources they are less credible, and hence 
less quoted, and as news actors they are less newsworthy. 
Virtually all major news topics are as male-oriented as the social 
and political domains they define. Gender issues have low newsworthi-
ness, unless they can be framed as open forms of conflict or as amusing 
fait divers. The women s movement may, up to a point, be benevolently 
covered, as long as it is not radical
and as long as male positions are 
not seriously threatened. Women s engagement in political protest, for 
example, against nuclear arms, is amusingly reported as long as it is 
playful, but it is ignored, attacked, or marginalized as soon as it appears 
to be serious, as was the case for the women beleaguering the U.S. air-
base at Greenham Common in the United Kingdom.
22 
Sexism as a struc- 

---

Political Communication in Action 
25
tural problem of society is denied or mitigated, identified with old-fash-
ioned chauvinists. Sexual intimidation may be covered for spectacular 
cases (as in the Hill-Thomas hearings in U.S. Congress), but it is hardly 
or only reluctantly taken seriously as an everyday problem. Special con-
tributions of women tend to be ignored, especially in male-dominated 
domains such as politics or science. Their small presence in disreputed 
domains, such as crime or war, is hardly acknowledged. Thus, news 
content and style continue to contribute to stereotypical attitudes about 
women. Feminism itself is ignored, problematized, or marginalized. 
Readers are generally presupposed to be male. 
This incomplete list of some major properties of the news cover-
age of gender shows again, as for the issue of race, that journalists and 
the media are hardly different from other elite groups and institutions, 
and that male elite power is hardly challenged by the media. Collusion 
and consensus, rather than conspiracy, are the conditions and the conse-
quence of such male-dominated reporting, even when the majority of 
the (potential) audience is female. That is, unlike the case of white group 
dominance, there is not even the potential counterpower of a female 
majority that is able to challenge such dominance; this is also true for the 
domains of politics, corporate business, science and scholarship, the 
forces of law and order, the unions, the church, scholarship, among 
other more or less powerful institutions of Western societies.
Class  
The working class is hardly covered more positively than minorities and 
women. Most mass media, not only in the West, are business corpora-
tions deeply integrated in the capitalist mode of production. It has 
become trivial to emphasize the increasing commodity status of news 
and other media genres. Advertising is the life blood of virtually all 
mainstream media, which precludes serious critique of advertising busi-
nesses. Free market ideologies are generally paramount, now also in 
Eastern Europe, and rarely does the press fundamentally challenge them. 
Against this framework, class conflict is increasingly portrayed 
as a thing of the past, if classes are recognized as relevant social forma-
tions at all. It might thus be repeated for workers
essentially what has 
been summarized here for the coverage of women and minorities in the 
media. They have less active and passive access, are less credible 
sources, are less quoted, have less news value (unless they resort to vio-
lence and strikes), and so on.
23
Business news will focus on business elites, 
not on those on the workfloor. Workers
contributions to the economy are 
taken for granted and hence ignored, although they may be blamed for 
recessions. Exploitation, health hazards in factories, as well 

---

Political Communication in Action 
26
as any other situation for which management or owners (let alone the 
whole capitalist system) could be blamed are ignored or underreported, 
except in spectacular cases defined as incidents. Strikes tend to be cov-
ered as a problem for the public, if not as a threat to the economy. In 
industrial conflicts, the perspective of management is prevalent in the 
definitions of the situation, in interviews, quotes, topics, and style of 
coverage. Workers are not defined as being part of the audience. In sum, 
except in negative accounts of conflicts or in news about negotiations 
with their leaders, workers are hardly visible at all.